


Heart to Blood-pusher

by zombified_queer



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternia is Terrible, Bro Strider is Terrible, Feelings Jams, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Meteorstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:14:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24759898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombified_queer/pseuds/zombified_queer
Summary: Scorpio Daily Horoscope: That family secret that's just beginning to peek out? You're still feeling quite protective of it . . .Vriska learns to talk to Dave about the ways in which your lusus can royally fuck you up for the rest of your natural life.
Relationships: Vriska Serket & Dave Strider
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Heart to Blood-pusher

Teaching Terezi poker and then being better than her is harder than Dave thought. He has no idea if sniffing your own cards is cheating. And she’s got a wicked poker face.

“Hey cool kid.”

Dave and Tarezi turn, looking up at the troll in the doorway. Terezi sniffs the air.

“Vriska.” Terezi’s voice is even, civil.

“Yeah.” Vriska tosses her head, flicks a stray lock of hair out of her face. Since she started shaving her head she looks intimidating. “I’m borrowing your cool kid for a second.”

Terezi sticks out her tongue. Vriska rolls her eyes, all eight pupils. 

“I’m not even gonna punch him,” Vriska says. “Not even a little.”

“What’s happening?” Dave asks, cool as he can manage.

“C’mere a second, cool kid.” Vriska’s voice is a sneer. It always is. “I wanna chat about something important.”

Dave gets up. Stretches. His legs feel like jelly from sitting on the floor forever. But he makes the numb-static-leg-limp look like a cool swagger. Like a pirate.

Vriska leads Dave down the hall, down to her room. For a moment, Dave wonders if she is gonna punch him. It’s her way of showing affection, maybe. Punching and sneering and picking on you with absolutely zero mercy.

But she lets him into her room. Dave’s never been inside and he’s never bothered to ask what’s in Vriska’s room.

There’s shattered eight balls on her floor, cobalt fluid turning to sticky ooze. And dice. So many eight-sided dice Dave thinks she’s using them for some kind of secret weapon. But the whole eight-sided dice thing is what he expects from Vriska.

He doesn’t expect to find the walls of her room plastered with Alternian punk bands and FLARPing posters. None of them are hung straight. And he doesn’t expect that she, just like Dave, wads her clothes up and tries to dunk sweet buckets into the laundry hamper.

He doesn’t expect her to have a couple sweet armchairs.

“Oh shit this is like one of those blood-pusher to blood-pusher things,” Dave says, sinking into a chair. “Alright, what’s up, uh, sis?”

“Don’t ever say those cringe words again, cool kid.” Vriska sits with one leg tucked under her. “But, uh, look. Rose and Kanaya talk, right, and I overhear them and—”

“You’re nosy.” Dave nods in understanding.

Vriska narrows her eyes. “Don’t interrupt me, cool kid, I’m being serious here.”

“Right, right.” Dave folds his hands in his lap.

“So, like, your lusus?”

“Bro, yeah.” Dave tenses at the thought. Is she gonna jump him? He should’ve brought a sword, no matter how shitty. “My lusus.”

“Uh. He trained you from, like, your emergence.”

“From the meteor, yeah.” Dave shrugs. “He was super shitty. He wanted me to strife him all the time just to eat.”

“Right.” Vriska nods. “Uh, my lusus was kinda the same?”

She’s making these gestures with her hands, like she has no idea how to explain it. But Dave gets it. 

“Ohhhh. Did Karkat, like, tell you to do this? Or Miss Fussyfang herself?” Dave asks. 

Vriska shrugs. She _never_ shrugs. If there’s one thing about Vriska, it’s that she’s always sure. 

“I mean, it’s okay,” Dave fumbles. “Or, not, like, okay because that was fucked but I get it. They were super shitty lusii.”

“Yeah.” Vriska sighs. “Shitty. For real.”

“You wanna talk about it?” Dave pushes up his shades. “I mean you don’t have to but I’m here. We’re all kinda trapped on the meteor and I think Fussyfangs would get pretty pissy with all of us if we didn’t have that, uh, feelings-jam thing Gamzee encourages.”

“Gog, Karkat would, like, adhesive-strip us to chairs in a circle until we talked about our emotions.” Vriska rolls her eyes at the thought. “He’s, like, what every jadeblood wishes they could be.”

“Total mom friend, yeah.”

“Anyway,” Vriska says. “You should get back to Terezi and your card game. I don’t want her to think I roughed you up.”

Dave points out, “You could do the friendly-shoulder-jab. I won’t tell.”

Vriska laughs. It’s nice.

* * *

Dave’s not sure how Terezi managed to be holding a full house, but she sets it down with a cackle.

“I believe,” she says, “the proper term is pogchamp.”

Dave rolls his eyes. “That’s cheating.”

“No it’s not!”

“Leave it to Terezi to be a cheater,” Vriska interjects from the doorway. “You cool kids got room for a winner?”

“No,” Terezi says, shuffling the deck.

“Yeah,” Dave waves Vriska over. “Terezi’s been kicking my ass all, what, night? Morning?”

“Afternoon,” Vriska corrects, taking a seat on the floor. 

“What’s with the racket in the kitchen?” Dave asks, watching Terezi deal.

“Oh my gog, Gamzee’s trying to cook. Like really make something.” Vriska looks at her cards and she has an equally good poker face. “Fussyfangs is trying to keep him away from the shit in the fridge.”

“You know if he touches Sollux’s programmer juice, we’re all gonna be without internet for a week, right?” Dave points out.

“Hey,” Terezi says, betting. “When did you two get chummy? Did Vriska beat you up?”

“Nah,” Dave says, looking at his cards. Foldsville. “We’re literally just vibing, Terezi.”

“Vibing,” Vriska agrees. “And you know I don’t beat up cool kids.”

Dave nods. “She doesn’t beat up cool kids.”

“I don’t trust either of you.” Terezi says, laying down her cards. 

“That’s fine.” Vriska sets down two pairs—Kings and 10s—and grins. “Read it and weep, loser patrol.”

* * *

Dave, by the end of the week, can jot down everything he knows about Vriska on a single sheet of notebook paper.

The main thing he has to remember is that if they’re ever going to have a feelings jam, it’s on her terms. Which is fine. Dave’s had his feelings jam with Rose. And Karkat. And he touched on it with John but it’s whatever.

Terezi though.

He hasn't said a word about his whole lusus-slash-Bro feels to her. So Dave suddenly going on a bunch of feelings jams with Vriska probably seems like cheating.

Over breakfast, he approaches the subject. It’s just him nursing some weaksauce coffee, Terezi in her scalemate onesie, and the ongoing Kanaya-Sollux-Gamzee feud over the fridge having a padlock on it.

“Hey, ‘rezi?”

“Hmm?” She spoons another bite of Lucky Charms into her mouth, half-awake.

“Can have, uh, a feelings jam later?”

“Yeah,” Terezi says while chewing. “We can always have a feelings jam, cool kid.”

Dave shrugs.

* * *

They’re standing on the balcony at the back of the meteor, thick glass separating them from the void. It’s quiet, a rarely used spot on the meteor. Great for feeling jams and being poetic about death and life and all the bullshit that comes with it.

Vriska hits some kind of bug juul that smells like saltwater taffy. She offers the rigid worm vape and Dave shakes his head. She grins, exhaling more vapors.

“How’d she take it?” Vriska asks, leaning on the balcony and watching the star rushing past them. “Good?”

Dave makes noncommittal noise. 

“That’s Terezi for you, yeah.” Vriska tilts her head. “Back when we were Scourge Sisters she thought it was real fucked up to feed people to your lusus.”

“She never knew her lusus.”

“Yeah! See?” Vriska’s eyes widen. “Like, some people have a lusus that’s really nice. Like Equius’ little butler. Or Karkat’s lusus. But Fef and me have some weird issues.”

“Lusus who eat other trolls.” Dave leans on the railing next to Vriska. “Or other lusii.”

“And like it’s fucked up to orphan someone, y’know. ‘s why Eridan and I used to be a team. No loose ends.” Vriska takes another hit off the bug juul in silence, exhaling saline smoke. “I mean we all had to murder our way to the top, but no one wants to be a monster about it.”

Dave nods. 

“And I guess Spidermom was just trying to make me stronger? Like your lusus kept strifing with you all the time.” Viska stares dead ahead. “It’s just fucked up that we’re the bad guys for just living.”

“Yeah.” Dave watches two stars orbiting each other fly past the meteor. “‘cause now we don’t know up from down. Always fighting.”

“You get it, cool kid.”

For a moment, they don’t talk. They don’t need to. It’s the mutual understanding, not wanting to push the other too far. It’s just the hum of the engines, that constant roar under all the noise of living.

“You would’ve been a damn good FLARP buddy,” Vriska says at last. “Do you know how many people use swordkind?”

“I’m guessing not a lot?”

“No one!” Vriska points out. “And swords are, like, the perfect balance. Lets you main other stuff, knowing someone’s got your back.”

Dave shrugs. “Yeah but you would’ve been the best at, like, World of Warcraft and Call of Duty and shit.”

“Man I miss FLARPing.”

“I miss Call of Duty.”

And then they snicker. The hilarity of it all, missing games instead of anything else. But they’re allowed to laugh at it and that’s what makes all the difference.


End file.
